Should be move the community IRC from Slack to Discord

[DMehaffy]

@Antoine

Not all comunities have the skills to run their own server, I don’t think that is the case for Strapi.

Yes we are more than capable to run alternative software, but there is a cost there. Both in the cost of the software (depends), and the cost of maintenance; we did opt to self host the forum as we wanted direct access to modify if as needed from the core level but at the cost of infrastructure and devops time.

For the moment the forum does not require me to constantly monitor it from a human perspective and I’ve automated almost all the primary maintenance tasks minus major version updates.

@Antoine

So maybe we are taking a decition in moving grounds, and 1 year from now Discord puts a paywall for bigger comunities or something, same for Slack, you just can’t tell.

That is certainly a risk yes, but there are other reasons we are opting for discord.

@Antoine

But if we need a chat, I agree with @huna, why not Matrix to be more in line with the open source comunity?

The primary driving force for the move to Discord is the platform we have chosen for our StrapiConf which integrates Discord as the main chat service, the discussion about moving our entire community to one platform (Discord) has stemmed from that.

@Antoine

I agree with @Gayrat, I stoped looking at the chat now for some time now, I rely only in the Forum, why do we need a chat?

For some it is easier to have real time communication about topics, a benefit that Discord would give us is the freedom to spin up ad-hoc online meetups like AMAs or debug sessions in Voice/Screenshare channels (anyone could). I used to regularly hop on Twitch and stream while I worked through some GitHub issues, play some music, and let people ask questions if I had some free time. I would certainly love to continue this; both because I find it fun and because it puts a “face to the name”. Others on the Strapi team also are looking forward to this.

@ChristopherLMiller

I feel using slack vs discord because “professional is almost irrelevant” Even as a developer I don’t sit and go oh man I’m not going to their support chat because they are using discord, that’s not professional. Honestly, if I need “professional support” I’m not gonna ping the one or two guys who work for Strapi on Slack or Discord I’m going to be finding a POC to the team themselves via the website, whether email, GitHub. The chats are just that, chats, a quick way to quickly get community input on a problem or thought I’m having.

We will never charge to access our community, I say that strongly, never. But yes if a business needs to chat with us and Discord doesn’t feel professional, this is why we have enterprise licenses with enterprise contact methods and a support platform for that type of communication.

Our community platforms don’t push any enterprise standards because they aren’t designed or meant for that.

@ChristopherLMiller

@Gayrat Honestly if threads are what you need and why you insist they stick with Slack over Discord then you’re at the appropriate place for it anyways.

Indeed, our forum is the place for that type of conversation, not any IRC chat.

[Antoine]

Considering the fact that you want to use more Voice/Screenshare channels, well just use Discord, that is a no brainer. Running your own server would be a pain, and Discord is so much better with voice channels than Slack that is hard to compare.

I think that what I got wrong was that I focused all the attention in the IRC without considering StrapiConf and live AMAs.

Is actually a great idea to have the conference in the same place than the community chat

[DMehaffy]

I have closed the poll as it has run it’s course for the past 7 days.

Thank you all for the information, we will collect and parse through it all and work on a prototype plan to show before we initiate the move.

[DavoMyan]

My input:

Discord is the way to go in my opinion, the first thing I did when I visited the Strapi website was ctrl+f for any discord server and was sad to see there didn’t exist any. Today I got pinged for the strapi conference on Slack and found the discord link and talked to DMehaffy about it being a better solution than Slack.

Discord saves all the message history unlike Slack which deletes everything after X amount of messages, Discord is easier to use, an easier UI/UX for the eyes, many customizable options like moderation discord bots or a ticket system like how the TypeScript discord handles several help channels (I saw a screenshot of that bot above here too). The role system makes you ping everyone with a certain role if you need help with for example @react ( I think Slack has this too actually), Discord is moving from gaming purposes to a more professional solution so expect more formal new features and so much more.

You can even use BetterDiscord which makes your Discord run with custom scripts, but I heard that’s against ToS so its bannable so use with caution.

Also I read here most of the reasons against Discord is that it’s hard to search/find anything and I absolutely disagree. It’s so much easier to find specific stuff, you can ctrl+f in any channel, type the name of the person who sent a message and say if it needs to include any image or link they have posted.